New therapy uses electricity to cancel out Parkinson tremors

A new therapy for Parkinson's cancels out brain signals causing the characteristic tremors.

A new therapy could help suppress tremors in people with Parkinson's disease, an Oxford University study suggests.

The technique – called transcranial alternating current stimulation or TACS – cancels out the brain signal causing the tremors by applying a small, safe electric current across electrodes on the outside of a patient's head.

The preliminary study, conducted with 15 people with Parkinson's disease at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital, is published in the journal Current Biology. The researchers showed a 50 per cent reduction in resting tremors among the patients.

Physical tremors are a significant and debilitating symptom of Parkinson's disease, but do not respond well to existing drug treatments.

Tremors can be successfully treated with deep brain stimulation, a technique that involves surgery to insert electrodes deep into the brain itself to deliver electrical impulses. But this invasive therapy is expensive and carries some health risks, including bleeding in to the brain, which means it is not suitable for all patients.

In TACS in contrast, the electrode pads are placed on the outside of the patient's head, so it does not carry the risks associated with deep brain stimulation.

Professor Peter Brown of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, who led the study, said: 'Tremors experienced by Parkinson's sufferers can be devastating and any therapy that can suppress or reduce those tremors significantly improves quality of life for patients.

'We are very hopeful this research may, in time, lead to a therapy that is both successful and carries reduced medical risks. We have proved the principle, now we have to optimise it and adapt it so it is able to be used in patients. Often that is the hardest part.'

The research was supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (Oxford BRC), a collaboration between Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust and Oxford University to accelerate healthcare innovation. It was also supported by the Medical Research Council, Rosetrees Trust, the Wellcome Trust and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

TACS works by placing two electrode pads on the patient, one close to the base of the neck and one on the head, above the motor cortex (part of the brain implicated in controlling the tremors).

The small alternating current stimulation the electrodes deliver is matched to the oscillating tremor signal to cancel it out, and suppress the physical tremor.

Professor Brown said: 'The approach is based on the fact the brain operates using brain waves. If we can stimulate with matching waves we can either replace a signal that is absent or, in this case, cancel out a pathological brain wave.

'It is similar to the principle of noise-cancelling headphones that we are all familiar with. Those headphones detect ambient noise and then produce a signal to cancel it out.'

Professor Brown said the therapy now had to be developed into a viable patient treatment for Parkinson's tremors, which could involve a system that would continually detect the brain signal and adjust the delivered stimulation to cancel it out.

He said such technology could involve a system where pads were placed under the skin, allowing the therapy to remain 'minimally invasive' to reduce risk but making it more convenient for a patient to be fitted with the device.

He added: 'There would be nothing to see, no wires on show, but it would deliver stimulation continuously.'

Professor Brown said further work would also look at the effectiveness of prolonged stimulation and whether the therapy may help the brain adapt itself to control tremors.

Related Stories

Electrical stimulation using extradural electrodes—placed underneath the skull but not implanted in the brain—is a safe approach with meaningful benefits for patients with Parkinson's disease, reports the October issue ...

Mayo Clinic researchers have found a novel way to monitor real-time chemical changes in the brains of patients undergoing deep brain stimulation (DBS). The groundbreaking insight will help physicians more effectively use ...

Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) offers a less invasive way to eliminate tremors caused by Parkinson's disease and essential tremor than deep brain stimulation (DBS) and radiofrequency (RF) treatments, and is as effective, ...

Patients with advanced Parkinson disease (PD) who received deep brain stimulation treatment had more improvement in movement skills and quality of life after six months than patients who received other medical therapy, but ...

At Scott & White Memorial Hospital, a multi-disciplinary team of neurosurgeons, neurologists, neurophysiologist, neuropsychologists and a movement disorders specialist are offering hope to some Parkinson's patients with a ...

Recommended for you

A new iPhone mobile app which allows patients with Parkinson's disease to track their symptoms in real time and share this information with researchers was featured by Apple executives today during the company's ...

Although levodopa remains the "gold standard" to effectively control motor deficits in the treatment of early stage Parkinson's disease (PD), it loses effectiveness as the disease progresses. After four to six years of treatment ...

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) often have difficulties with visual acuity in low-contrast images. Because they may have normal high-contrast vision, this is often overlooked during routine eye exams. In the current ...

Parkinson's disease is the second neurodegenerative disease in number of patients after Alzheimer's disease. The Technical Research Centre for Dependency Care and Autonomous Living (CETpD) of the Universitat ...

User comments

Please sign in to add a comment.
Registration is free, and takes less than a minute.
Read more

Click here to reset your password.
Sign in to get notified via email when new comments are made.